The Community Services Department-Recreation Division (“Recreation”) recognizes the value of partnering with outside organizations to provide services that benefit the Richmond community. To provide support to organizations that provide community service and to create an equitable process, staff presented to the City Council a fee waiver policy for determining when event-related fees can be waived, and a partnership policy to expand or enhance the services provided to Richmond residents.
Recreation strives to be an exceptional steward of facilities, parks, and funding for programs and services. Historically, Recreation charges fees for programs and facility/park usage to help cover the cost of providing such services and maintaining facilities. Charging fees is a standard practice in the Recreation and Parks sector when individuals, private groups, government, or non-profit groups wish to reserve and exclusively utilize public facilities.
For many years, Recreation has worked with a variety of individuals and organizations to provide programs and services to Richmond residents and members of the public at large. Organizations have increasingly requested fee waivers to support their program delivery. Additionally, partnerships between the City and organizations have steadily grown. This has caused Recreation to recognize the need to create more formal policies and procedures to ensure that fee waiver approvals and partnerships are consistent with the mission of Recreation and to ensure that organizations are treated with consistency and in an equitable manner.
City Council requested that City staff develop and bring forth comprehensive fee waivers and partnership policies for consideration. In order to provide an equitable process, staff recommended the creation of the following policies and procedures for
(1) fee waivers for events or temporary uses of City facilities and/or parks, and
(2) the development of partnership policies for longer-term collaborations between the City of Richmond and community-based organizations for the benefit of the Richmond community.
